Adrenaline
by Aelan Greenleaf
Summary: Emily ran to him, when she had no way out and no hope. But she left him, and their team, without a word of farewell. Six months later, when a series of murders committed by a pregnant woman bring the team to Montana, they will crash together once more...
1. Night

She doesn't know where else to go.

She knows what he said, about keeping them out of the loop. She can't afford to let any of them suspect anything, let alone actually know something about this. Like most creatures of the Earth, she would do anything to protect her family, including keeping them in the dark.

She's always prided herself on being strong. When she was a girl, she would often come home from school to find packing boxes lined up in the hallway of her home, already half full and bearing the address of their next destination. This was often the way she found out about a new move, by looking at the tags and stickers on the suitcases, discovering yet again that it was time for them to go. She'd learnt long ago not to show weaknesses, not to give into emotions, not to cede any control.

But now...

She knows he wants her dead. She's already, in some way or form, accepted this. It's the fright, however, the fear of the unknown that is driving her crazy. It's the hyper-vigilance that is pushing her over the edge, leaving her unable to sleep, to rest, to even breathe without letting down her guard. She's fuelled now mostly by adrenaline and caffeine, sustaining herself on her own fear and anxiety, keeping her in a constant state of mental and physical motion, unable to stop. All she knows now is that she is near her breaking point, and that she can't be alone.

She knocks on the door quickly, knuckles rapping against the polished wood. There's a buzzing in her ear that just won't go away, a constant voice whispering just beyond audible range. She knows she doesn't have long left here, that she's got to get out soon, get out and go far away. She shouldn't even be stopping here, especially after what Doyle had said. She should just go and-

The door swings open, breaking her out of her frenzied reverie. He stands before her, eyes heavy with sleep, body slow and sluggish, and hair dishevelled and matted down on one side. "Emily...?" his asks, his voice croaking, his body still half-asleep. "Are you okay?" he asks, his eyes becoming more focused as he slowly returns to a conscious state.

"Can I come in?" she breathes, stepping into his house without waiting for an answer.

"Sure...?" he says, confusion evident in his tone of voice, but even as he says it he is closing the door behind him, turning the lock back into place.

She passes a mirror as she walks down the hall, stopping in her tracks as she sees her reflection. Her hair is slightly out of place, but still acceptable; her clothes look slightly worse for wear, with a bra strap showing from underneath her open necked sweater, but overall she doesn't look too out of place. It's her eyes, however, that catch her own attention: she can see the wild, unrestrained panic in her own stare, the barely restrained terror fully evident in the tight lines of her face, the nervous set of her jaw.

"Emily?" he calls out again, concern having now replaced confusion. She can see him out of the corner of her eyes, though she is still facing the mirror, unable to look away. She can feel the nervous energy coursing through her veins, the electric current fuelled by her flight instinct keeping her constantly on her toes.

He steps closer to her, worried now. "What is it, Emily, what's wrong?"

Her hands are tingling with energy, and she has to fight to keep her fingers from moving. She can't take this anymore, this constant fear, this never-ending anxiety. She's tired of running, tired of always looking over her shoulder, and, most of all, tired of keeping everyone in the dark. She knows she can't stop running, not now, but she's just so damn tired and yet the terror inside her is keeping her mercilessly awake.

Doyle is coming, and there's nothing she can do about it. Her body is screaming to keep moving, to get rid of this energy and of this panic, but she doesn't want to run anymore.

And as Reid moves one step closer to her, she knows exactly how to stop.

He's reaching a hand out to her, a comforting one meant for her shoulder, but she spins suddenly and grabs him by the elbow. She tugs him towards her roughly, and as he stumbles towards her she reaches for his face with both hands, pulling his lips down to hers in one frenzied movement. She presses her lips against his hungrily, desperately, as her tongue presses against his lips and he, too stunned to think, opens his mouth to meet hers.

He breaks away from her after a moment, the fog lifting from him, as he pushes back from her and holds her by the shoulders. "Emily, I- I mean I don't, uh, know... what- what is going on?"

She looks up into his eyes and sees only trust and concern reflected in his gaze. There's no panic there, no wild-eyed terror, and no glint of malice. She sees everything she stands to lose in his gaze, and she knows that she doesn't want to leave without feeling this comfort, this friendship one last time.

"Please, Spencer," she murmurs, locking her eyes with his own, "I need you to kiss me." Her voice drops down even softer, and it becomes almost a pleading request for release. "Please."

There's terror now, too, in his eyes, but terror of another nature. It's the age old fear of the unknown. He's fighting something now, something deep within, torn between his mind and his emotions.

"Okay," he whispers. He hesitates briefly, still unsure and still confused, but the part of him that longs for human contact, the part that needs to feel connected, has suddenly taken control. He brings his lips down to hers, moving his hands down to her face, and she can feel the tears of relief crawl down her cheeks as his lips make contact with her own.

"Take me upstairs, Spencer," she whispers when they finally break apart.

And, as he looks down into her eyes and sees the pain they hold reflected back at him, he obliges her.

* * *

In the morning, when the street outside his bedroom window is still dark and silent, she untangles herself out of his sleeping embrace, quietly puts back on her clothes and shoes, and slips out the door. And as she goes, she knows that all that was once Emily Prentiss is lost to her now, as she abandons her friend and runs away from all she's ever known.


	2. Morning

**A/N: There are stories that you keep and there are stories that you let go. I guess I've decided to keep this one. Stay tuned!**

* * *

He wakes up alone.

The morning sun is stretching its way into his room, expanding across the carpet and up to the edges of the bed. He is caught under the covers, his one exposed hand languishing in the warm beam of the sun, the heat from it stirring him back into consciousness. Instinctively, he reaches out to the other side of the bed, half-expecting to touch warm, delicate flesh, but comes away only with the cool sensation of the bedsheet against his skin.

For a brief moment, he knows it was just a dream; of course he is alone, when has he ever _not _woken up alone? Mentally, he scoffs at himself for being so presumptuous; why on earth would Emily Prentiss ever come to him for relief or release?

But as he slowly approaches full awareness, spurred on by the sudden chiming of his bedside alarm, he starts to realize that it quite possibly wasn't just a dream. The doorbell ringing in the middle of the night, Emily walking in through the front door, her sudden move to kiss him in the dark entryway...

And how could he ever forget that horrible, aching terror in her eyes?

That what was did it, really. In that moment, when he'd looked down and seen that endless fear in her eyes, he knew he couldn't turn down her request. He knows, of course, what it was (and what it is) like to search for something, anything, to dull the pain and the fear and the anxiety spurred on by total loss of control. He'd once found his respite in the form of a narcotic, injected straight into his arm. It was only natural that she too would find her own form of release, her unique form of physical and psychological relief.

However, he knows even now as he lies in bed that that's the analytical Spencer Reid talking, the profiler profiling. Removed from everything, from emotion and from feeling, he can observe Emily's need for comfort and for release as a perfectly natural response to environmental stressors. But the emotional part of him, the part that let her kiss him and the part that kissed her back, knows no such level of detachment.

_Reaching the top of the stairs, she pushes him against a wall – hard. He gasps as his tailbone strikes first, but he can't feel the pain, he is much too distracted by the warm feel of Emily pressing against him, pinning his wrists securely against the wall. He gives in completely to her control, knowing that he isn't assertive enough or even nearly experienced enough to be the one calling the shots. As her lips eagerly devour his, some distant part of his brain wonders how long it's been since he'd been with a woman. Four years? Five maybe? And even before then, how experienced had he ever even been?_

_However, any doubt that had surfaced during his impromptu reverie was instantly silenced as she twisted him sideways, pulling him off of the wall, and pushing him (backwards) down towards the bed. Any coherent thought at that moment is immediately lost to him, as he falls down towards the mattress, fingers tangled up in her hair and his capacity for intelligent thought all but extinguished by his primal desire to somehow put an end to that awful terror in her frantic eyes._

He blushes to himself, cheeks burning with his recollection of the night before. Why had he let that happen? Why had he barely said a word in protest, barely even putting up a fight? This was his co-worker, his teammate, his _friend_ – and yet he'd crumbled in an instant, letting down his defences immediately simply to enjoy the pleasures of the flesh. He could have – should have – fought harder; anyone could have seen how vulnerable and lost she was in that moment, and yet he let himself give in.

He knows, of course, why he let it happen the way it did. Why he let her into the house without any hesitation, why he let her kiss him in the dark, and why he let himself slide his hands down her body, pressing her down into the mattress beneath them. How many nights has he returned to an empty house, to an empty bed, to an empty life? For years, he's watched Hotch go home to his son, JJ to Will and Henry, Rossi to his occasional female companions, Morgan to his women, even Garcia back to Kevin. Sometimes they aren't always happy, sometimes things aren't always right, but at the end of the day there's someone there for them to hold on to, someone there to fill the void deep inside. He thought he was immune, thought that he could fight it, but when he looked down into Emily's eyes and saw what haunted him reflected in her own eyes, he knew couldn't fight it any more.

For all of that though, isn't he still waking up alone?

He pushes himself upright, swinging his legs over and out of the bed. Her clothes, her shoes, her gun (and why had she brought her gun?) were all gone – it was as if she had never been here. She had stolen out in the middle of the night, leaving as quickly and mysteriously as she came. For his part, he knows he's never been this confused in his life. Why had she come to him? What was she running from? Where was she going?

He slowly starts to get dressed for the day, mindlessly pulling on pants and socks and buttoning up a fresh cardigan, all the while consumed by his analysis of the prior evening's events. He can feel an unnamed, unidentifiable feeling of dread in the bottom of his stomach, a nameless sensation of something having gone horribly wrong. He wasn't blind to the fact that something had changed in Emily's life, something big enough to transcend the barrier between her personal and her work lives. She had been more distracted, more emotional – and it was getting worse all the time.

No matter. He'd be at work in a half hour or so, and he'd simply ask her then. That is, of course, if he's even able to look her in the eyes ever again...

He makes his way downstairs, picking up his sunglasses from the hallway table (the light still stings his eyes), and reaches out for the doorknob. As he goes to open the door, his phone rings, causing him to drop his keys onto the floor.

He mumbles a curse under his breath even as he flips open the phone. "Reid," he states, having forgotten to look at the caller ID.

"It's Emily," the voice states, and it takes him a second to recognize Garcia's unusually serious tones. "You need to be here."

He's out the door before she even finishes speaking, heart pounding in his chest as he races towards his car. Even as his mind kicks into overdrive, mulling over the details and attempting to avoid colliding with other vehicles on the road, he can't help remember the fear in her eyes as he grabbed him, the fear that stayed there even as he held her close.


	3. Truth or Consequences

She's always loved small town stores.

There's just something about the mismatched shelving units, the haphazard arrangement of products, the larger-than-average community postings board (filled to the brim with notices for bridal showers and baptisms) – it all just makes her love them more. She makes her way down the first of the four aisles slowly, reaching out a hand to touch several items, all at random – her fingers brush against the hard pink plastic of a sunscreen lotion bottle, barely pausing before moving on to the elastic feel of a cheap soap dish container. The store is almost empty, her only company the white-haired woman minding the front counter and the older gentleman who has stopped in to say hello. She can hear the murmurs of their conversation float past her, the sound reverberating in the aisle as she makes her way further down into the store.

She is somewhere in New Mexico, and has been there for a few days. In the six weeks since leaving – _abandoning_ – Washington, she's made her way through dozens of states and a countless number of towns. Her old bosses at Interpol arranged the delivery of several fake identities and thirty thousand dollars to her, telling her to keep running until they managed to track down Doyle. The mere fact that they gave her thirty thousand dollars in the clear tells her enough: she'll be running a long time.

She spends her days driving along in her newly acquired vehicle – a drab, featureless compact car from a decade ago. She takes back roads and side streets, always choosing the long way over the fast way; without a real destination, is there really any point in finding the fastest ways thru? She spends half the time travelling worrying about her future life, and the other half of her time obsessing about her past life. _What's the team doing now, _she'll think to herself, one hand directing the wheel while the other taps the side of the window nervously. _What are they all doing? (And do they miss me as much as I miss them...?)_

And, of course, those thoughts almost always eventually lead back to her last few hours in DC, the hours she spent frantically looking for an escape, for a way out, and then finally finding that comfort in the arms of one of her best friends. She can still hear his voice in her ear, coming down to her from above, as his body presses against hers and as he half-whispers, half-groans her name: "_Emily..."_

She shakes her head abruptly, as if the sudden movement will clear all of these thoughts from her head. She doesn't want to think about what she has done, what she has _used_ one of her best friends for; if ever she had had a truly innocent friend, Spencer Reid was it, and she had exploited him for her own gratification (or for her own salvation?). Even though she is in the midst of running for her life, she spends most of her time concerned with how she treated Spencer, how she came to him and how she left him. The guilt she felt and continues to feel pools in her stomach like rainwater in a puddle, and she can almost feel the physical weight of it dragging her down.

The worst part is, she knows she is about to feel a lot more guilty.

"Do you need help with anything?" a voice calls out from behind her, startling her completely, and it takes everything Emily has not to draw her gun in defence. She takes a deep, calming breath and turns to see the white-haired proprietor of Wilson's Corner Store.

She smiles at the woman, and is pleased to receive a smile in return. "Actually, yes, I could use some help. I was looking for pregnancy tests, but I don't see any on the shelves." She tries to ignore the warmth that collects in her cheeks; the burning sensation of an almost juvenile embarrassment painting her features a presumably bright red.

The woman's expression changes, her smile becoming more understanding, more sympathetic. "We do have some dear - I keep them near the front of the store so I can keep an eye on them. In a small town, they have a habit of sprouting legs and walking off on their own." She gestures for Emily to follow her to the front counter, where she hands her one of the few remaining boxes.

"Thank you," Emily says, taking out her wallet and removing a twenty to pay for it.

The woman rings through the purchase, puts the test in a small, discrete bag and hands Emily her change. "I hope you get the answer you're looking for," she states, and Emily thinks that that is possibly the best reply she could hear in this type of situation.

"Me too," Emily responds softly, before picking up her bag and heading back out into the warm New Mexico sun.

* * *

She waits until nightfall to take the test, after driving another eight hours to south-western tip of New Mexico (she'd chosen the direction after seeing a town named Truth-or-Consequences on the map – how fitting was that?). It had sat in the passenger seat next to her, a symbolic companion on the road, representing what could be and possibly what already was. Occasionally, as she cruised down the sun-baked interstates of New Mexico, she would cast a furtive glance towards the bag that contained her future, as if she was trying to catch it in the act. In the act of what, she was not certain, but for the next eight hours she toyed dangerously with the division of her attention between the road and the bag.

She goes into the bathroom, takes the test, and then lies down onto the bed to await her fate. She can't help but think of another time, long ago, when she was young and scared and completely alone. She had reassured herself then that the next time she had to be in this position, she would be an adult and probably married, probably happy at the possibility of creating a family. She chuckles to herself, knowing that youthful dreams and promises rarely go the way you'd have expected at fifteen.

She honestly doesn't know what she will do now. On one hand, she is quite literally on the run, a fugitive from her own life, without a permanent address, a permanent job, or even a permanent identity. She is in a fluid state, sliding from one place to another, from one name to the next. She probably couldn't even take care of a goldfish at this point, so a crying infant is almost impossible. Not to mention the fact that her potential offspring was the result a fleeting tryst, between her and a man whose trust she had abused and discarded.

And yet...

She was in her forties now, still young enough, but just barely. She had missed the window of opportunity earlier in her life for a family and for a traditional home, and she can't deny the yearning part of her, deep inside, that secretly celebrates the potential that this pregnancy test represents. Deeper still, another part of her, close to her heart and to her soul, cries out that she can't end another life, she can't go through that experience again. The first time, she had been right to do what she had did, she knows that now; she had been young and lost and alone. But now?

Could she really do this?

The alarm on her disposable cell phone abruptly wakes her out of her soul-searching reverie, and she pushes herself up off of the bed and heads towards the bathroom. Whatever else she could control in her life, she knows that this is something she can no longer control. _Whatever is done is done_, she thinks to herself as she crosses from the carpet of the main room onto the tile of the bathroom, and she takes a deep breath as she grabs the simple, disposable device that will now determine her fate.


	4. Moving On

There's a voice calling to him.

He can hear it, vaguely, coming to him from a distance, almost as if he was underwater and the sound was travelling down to him from the air above. He doesn't respond, not at first, still not entirely convinced that it is real. His headaches have been getting worse lately (since she left), and he remains hesitant to believe that anything psychosomatic could be troubling him.

A hand clamps down onto his shoulder, and he jumps, instinctively. He looks up to see the concerned face of Derek Morgan staring down at him, hand still placed firmly on his shoulder.

"I've been calling you for like a minute, Reid. Is everything alright?"

"Yeah- yeah, I'm fine," answers Reid, though the hesitation in his voice does not go unnoticed by Morgan.

"We're ready to start in the conference room," continues Morgan, though his face is still marked by a look of consternation radiating outwards from behind his eyes. He's been watching Reid, closely, for the last five months, ever since Emily left. They were all devastated by the strange and unusual disappearance of their colleague and of their friend, but out of all of them (including Garcia), Reid had been by far the most affected by her absence. He'd been at the forefront of the search at all times, barely sleeping, barely eating, surviving on coffee and on the hope of finding Emily Prentiss alive and well. But as the hours turned into days, and the days into weeks (not to mention the strange "suggestion" they'd received from Interpol to "tone down" their investigation), slowly life had begun to fall back into its familiar routine in the BAU, much as it had after the departure of Elle, of Gideon, and of course, JJ.

As they make their way across the bullpen and up the stairs, Reid remains acutely aware of Morgan's eyes on his back as he ascends the stairs in front of his colleague. He's been trying his best to shield his thoughts, his emotions from his friend over the past weeks and months, but evidently, he's been failing. He blames this partially on the fact that he is almost equally in the dark about his obsession with finding answers to Emily's vanishing act. His past and ongoing concern for her far exceeds that of a colleague or even that of a friend. So what was it?

_You don't love her._ This was his new mantra in everyday life, the new slogan he repeated to himself every morning, incorporating it as just another part of his routine. _ You don't love her_. He would repeat it to himself over and over, trying as hard as he could to ingrain it into his mind, into his heart.

_He looks down into her eyes, propped up onto his elbows as he positions himself above her. He notices the tears in her eyes, the redness behind her eyelids as she looks up at him. He stops immediately._

"_Are you okay, Em? Do you want us - me – to stop?" _

"_No," she whispers, and before he can argue with her, before he can even brush her tears away, she pushes her hips up to meet his and there's suddenly no hope in hell of turning back._

He knows that it's foolish, quite foolish in fact, of him to even entertain the possibility of his deeper feelings for Emily Prentiss, but he can't fight it. The logical part of his brain tries to tell him that it was just one night, one single meaningless incident in a lifetime of incidents, but he can't help himself. Maybe it's just his naive nature, his inexperienced heart lacking the proper judgement and wariness, but he knows his affection runs deeper than one single night of sex. (As for what she feels for him, though, who knows?)

He takes his seat in the conference room without a word, and looks down at the case file in front of him. He can't help the sigh that escapes him as he looks through it, instantly memorizing the faces, the names, the details of the newest set of crimes that have been brought to their doorstep. More faces, more pain – but every time, without fail, he now automatically thinks of Emily. He lives with this constant fear that the next case file he opens will be hers; that he will look down at the photograph of the victim and see only her eyes, her face looking back up at him.

He shakes his head, attempting to regain some clarity of thought.

"Here's the scoop: two people murdered in central Montana, both killed execution-style with fatal gunshot wounds to the head," begins Garcia, gesturing the parallel images of both victims' bodies that she has brought forth onto the screen.

"Two people doesn't make a spree, though," interrupts Morgan, looking back down at his tablet for confirmation. "So why are they calling us in?"

"Good question, my luscious lover. I have no idea, the order came in from the upper brass," she answers, shrugging helplessly. "The two were found two days apart, one about 80 miles from the first. No prints, no skin samples, and no leads. The bodies were found mere hours after death, but we still don't have full stories on either of them. They both aren't local, not only to the towns but to the whole state of Montana. One them of them was reported to be foreign, at least according to witnesses who spoke with the first victim only about an hour or so before his death."

"Foreign? So this is international then?" asks Seaver, her brow knotted with confusion.

"Not yet," interjects Hotch, nodding his thanks to Garcia for the briefing. "The best I can determine from the circumstances is that there's something bigger at stake here, something big enough for us to be called in to rural Montana. Wheels up in half an hour, let's get ready to move out."

As the team starts to gather their things, Garcia speaks once more. "One last thing, guys – I just got a report from the local sheriff at the second murder scene that seems to indicate there was a pregnant woman spotted at the location mere minutes before the murder."

"And?" asks Morgan, standing as he grabs his coffee mug and his tablet.

"Well, my handsome honey, the responding officer at the first scene also heard a witness confirm the presence of a pregnant woman in the vicinity of the first murder. Seems like you've all got to be looking for a vehicle with "baby on board" stickers," she says, grinning.

"I'll keep my eyes out for it, sugar," Morgan says, winking at her. She sends an air kiss his way in return, before grabbing her coffee mug and heading out of the room.

Morgan notices Reid still sitting at the table, looking down at the paper and ink case files in his hands. "What are you waiting for, boy genius? We gotta roll."

Reid crinkles his brow, staring down at the words on the pages, at the names and at the photographs of the crime scene. "There's something strange about this..." he says, almost murmuring it to himself.

"Reid, we deal with the strange and the unusual every day. Now c'mon, you told me you'd never miss another plane again. Let's keep that promise."

With that, Morgan exited the room and descended into the bullpen, leaving Reid to reluctantly tear away his attention from this new and eerie case file as he stood up and followed his colleague down into the heart of the FBI offices.


	5. Trouble

**This is the un-edited edition, I will be reviewing it again after work! Enjoy! :)

* * *

**

She is, without a doubt, in trouble.

Well, she was definitely in trouble before, there's no denying that. She was on the run, moving from state to state across the nation, fleeing the one person on the planet that could (and would) take everything from her. To say that life-threatening peril was new to her would be a gross exaggeration – however, that peril has just reached a new, all-time high.

She has known for the past two days that she was being followed; somewhere in the northern tip of Idaho, she'd realized that the man sitting behind her and two tables to the left at the diner had also been in the gas station convenience store that she'd entered the day before. She'd known immediately that he was definitely not a "friendly", and most definitely not simply a curious observer. She'd been spotted, made, identified – whatever the term, she'd been found.

And as is such, she'd had to take care of it.

Which is how she ended up in the situation she is in now: forced to kill not only the first man but a partner who'd turned up several hours later, she knows that their replacements will not be far behind. More than just that, though, she's put herself (or at least her activities) back onto the radar of the authorities. Sure, it would start only with the local police department, but with a second body, the state police would come in, which might catch the attention of well-connected detective or sheriff who just might contact the FBI and ask them to come in. If that happened, if the people she loves like family were to be called out here to the scene of _her _crime, then all she had fought for (and continues to fight for) would be lost.

She's not ready to lose everything that quickly.

So she's quickened her pace, trying to throw off the hypothetical scent from her trail. She's been moving forward then backtracking her movements at random for the past thirty hours, initially making it all the way into North Dakota only to move back into the endless rolling plains of north-central Montana. It's been getting steadily harder, however, to blend her movements into the background. At six months pregnant, people have been and will continue to notice her, a lone pregnant female moving around from place to place. She knows for a fact that at least one person saw her in the vicinity of the first encounter site between her and her malevolent shadow; though she'd known about the existence of a witness, she couldn't bear to think about killing an innocent soul just to protect her secret. So she's decided to hope for the best and pray that no one really remembers much from these two murders.

A kick in the lower right-hand quadrant of her abdomen distracts her from her reverie, causing her to abandon all thought of violence and death and malice, concentrating only on the defined bump protruding from her stomach. She smiles broadly, instantly comforted.

"I know you're still there," she whispers softly, wrapping her arms around her own belly. She can feel the kicks continue, the surface of her skin pressing outwards where a developing foot explores the contours of its home.

Emily honestly can't remember now when she _didn't_ speak to the baby. It was her constant companion at all times, her only comfort and her only salvation. When she had picked up the pregnancy test in that hotel room deep in the southern reaches of the western United States and had seen the positive result staring up at her, something deep inside her, something intrinsic, had shifted.

She knew in that moment that she was not and is not alone.

Since that moment, she has loved every moment of being pregnant. From the early days and weeks where she was nauseous left, right and center to the past few weeks where her bladder has been attacked randomly and repeatedly by the weight of her unborn child, she's relished every instant of it. Most of her enjoyment is, she realizes, quite selfish – she is revelling in the fact that she is not alone in her struggle, that she carries a piece of the home she was forced to leave with her, forever linking her to the places and the people she'd left behind. As long as she has her baby with her, she can remember what her old world was like; she can remember what it was like to have a family and a home.

The guilt however, still remains; it is her other companion, the silent and brooding co-pilot on her journey. The guilt stays with her: guilt over the fact that she has done horrible things while carrying her child within her; guilt over the fact that her child will be born into a fluid world, a world lacking truth and stability. Not to mention the inescapable and eternal guilt she felt and still feels about what she'd done (and, in roundabout way, continues to do) to her friend Spencer Reid.

The thought of him makes her sigh, leaning back into the headboard of the motel bed. She can see his face and his features so clearly in her mind's eye: the way his hair curls outwards on the edges of his temples; the way he licks his bottom lip when he is being attentive; the way his eyes had looked when he'd moved above her, never looking away. She closes her eyes for a brief moment, squeezing them tight in an attempt to vanquish these thoughts from her mind, if only for the moment. She needs to concentrate on the here and on the now; she needs to be ready for her next move, whatever and whenever that may be.

A knock at the door forces her to move from her comfortable perch on the bed, and she groans involuntarily as she rises, feeling the pinch in her lower back from the new weight pressing on her abdomen. She carefully checks the door, identifying the visitor not from the vantage point offered by the peephole in the door, but through a crack in the curtains she'd drawn over the window. Satisfied by what she sees, she moves all the way up to the door, unlocking the deadbolt and opening it to the outside air.

"Alyssa Jones?" asks the man at the door, dressed in the red and black of the local take-away spot.

"That's me," she answers, and the lie comes so easily that she worries, briefly, if the time might come where she would forget her real name.

"Here's the burger and fries combo you ordered," he says, passing her a large paper bag. It reeks of grease and grilled meat, but she loves it.

"Thanks," she tells him, handing him the money and gesturing for him to keep the change.

"No problem," he says in reply, pocketing the money and smiling at her in gratitude. "I'm sorry there was a bit of the wait for the food, though; there was a rush order for the local police department, apparently they needed burgers and fries ASAP!" He chuckles at that, shaking his head with disbelieving amusement.

Emily (Alyssa?) reaches into the bag, unable to deny herself any longer, and grabs one of the fries from the top of the pile. She chews it quickly, enjoying the warm, salty flavour of potatoes as it permeates her mouth. "Oh really?" she asks, curious.

"Yeah!" answers the young man, clearly thrilled about the new excitement in town. "I heard that there's FBI agents in town, the profiling kind – y'know, the ones that can help catch the dude who killed that German fellow a couple of days ago. Did ya hear there was another murder just down the road right after that one? Isn't that crazy? Two murders in less than two days! Never seen anything like this before..."

The young man continues talking, rambling on about the crime rate in this part of Montana, but she isn't listening any longer. Her jaw stops moving, her hand freezes in place even as she positions it to grab another fry. A profiling FBI team? Here? In this city? Her starts to race dangerously fast, as she attempts to regain some sense of composure and control in front of this outside party.

"Thank you for bringing me the food," she tells the young man, inadvertently cutting him off in the middle of a sentence about the number of car thefts the city has seen in the last couple of years. "I'm getting tired, though, so I'm going to head back in," she says, gesturing to her room and rubbing the side of her stomach for emphasis.

He looks down at her protruding belly, and nods in understanding. "Right, of course, you've got to be tired! Hope you _both_ enjoy the burger and fries, m'am!" he says, grinning down at her belly as if her unborn child could hear every word he was saying.

Emily steps back inside her room, shutting the door firmly behind her and locking the deadbolt back into place. She collapses down onto the bed, putting aside the bag with her dinner and resting her head down into the pillows. What was she going to do? Her team – her _ex-team_ – was here, right now, looking for her, though they didn't know that - yet. So what was going to be her next move?


	6. Professional

**Author's Note: Firstly, thanks to everyone reading, I'm glad you're liking it as much as I like writing it! Secondly, I want to make a quick note due to the aftermath of "Lauren": for the sake of this story, this is now officially considered AU, although it's pretty much been AU from the start. I will be incorporating some elements from the episode "Lauren" into the story, but for the most part, just pretend that it didn't happen. That's how I'm dealing with it! :)**

* * *

He isn't sure how he feels about Montana.

Coming from a large, bustling, eternally-loud city, he's never quite sure what to make of the endless rolling plains, quiet one-horse towns and slow pace of life he encounters in this particular northern state. Part of him is off-put by it, seeking the (false) comfort provided by the flashing lights of 24-hour buffet and burger joints, while another part of him is delighted by the silence in the streets, the respect of personal space that only the wide open countryside can provide.

"Yo, Reid, let's move," says Morgan from behind him, spurring him onwards to the waiting SUVs. They are in Great Falls, having arrived mere moments before aboard the jet. He'd tried to sleep on the way here, but there was something about this case that stuck with him, that taunted him slowly, keeping his eyes blearily open and his mind groggily awake.

They pile into the black vehicles in front of them, Morgan taking the helm of the first one, with Rossi in the passenger seat and Reid taking his place in the rear. Hotch and Seaver walk over to the second waiting vehicle, and they all make their way out of the airport parking lot, moving out in the city beyond.

As they turn through the city streets and avenues, Rossi picks up the case file and reviews it for the third time that day. "Okay, let's look this over again. The first murder took place in Westvale, about 40 miles east of Great Falls, at a small motel just off of the interstate. The next scene is in Greenhaven, 80 miles further east, in the bathroom of an all-hours gas station cafe."

"So which one are we taking?" asks Morgan, turning right onto the interstate ramp, bypassing the long line of convenience stores and fast food joints carefully positioned to draw in long-haul drivers.

"The first one, the one in Westvale. Hotch and Seaver are going to hook up with the local PD in Greenhaven; it's a larger center, they've already got a couple of detectives working on the case."

They pass the last few businesses on the outskirts of Great Falls, and suddenly they are in middle of the northern plains, the horizon seemingly a hundred miles away.

"Off to the middle of nowhere," mutters Morgan, and Reid says nothing, gazing out into the endless grasslands.

* * *

The town of Westvale is, much to Rossi's amused chagrin, almost exactly as Morgan had predicted. The small collection of homes, intermixed with a lone gas station and two small motels, is possibly the smallest place Reid has ever been to. He spots a lone pedestrian, walking swiftly and with purpose, her arms swinging at her sides. The headphones plugged into her ears along with the white running shoes on her feet give her away as a dedicated power-walker. This, for some reason, makes him smile, momentarily distracted from the details of the case by this lone woman, undeterred in the pursuit of fitness by the lack of exercise options in her tiny town.

The motel is a classic cheap wayside on the room, a one-night-only type establishment where weary travellers unable to keep their eyes open stop for the night, staying only long enough to rest enough to continue along their way. The lit-up sign is missing a few bulbs, spelling out "Paradi-e –otel" in flashing red lights.

Morgan parks the vehicle, and the three of them get out, Reid relishing the opportunity to stretch out his legs. He's noticed that on car trips, even those of only 40 miles, his bad knee starts to seize up, stiffening at the joint and causing him pain. He doesn't ever say this to his team, though; just like his headaches, he would rather keep the pain to himself.

There is a lone police officer stationed outside of the crime scene, keeping any thrill-seekers or intruders at bay. He's leaning against the door, looking tired, but he still manages to straighten up and smile as the three FBI agents approach.

"Thanks for coming," he says, extending a hand to each of them in turn. "I'm Officer Holden Turner, with the Greenhaven PD. Westvale doesn't have a force of its own, so the chief sent me over this way to secure the scene. I've been taking turns with another officer, he's asleep in the room next door," gesturing to the room immediately to the right of the one marked with crime scene tape.

"Seems like you're stretched a little thin around here," answers Rossi, looking around the seemingly deserted town. "I guess cases like these are few and far in-between around here."

Turner smiles half-heartedly, and turns to the door marked with tape. "You're no kidding," he mumbles, before opening the door and ushering the three agents inside.

"The body's been moved to the morgue in Greenhaven, along with the body from the second crime scene. Otherwise everything's been left the way we found it," says Turner, as he looks around the room. "I'll be waiting outside in case you need anything else."

Reid watches Turner move back outside, and then turns to scrutinize the rest of the room. It's small and cramped, standard backwater accommodations, but there's something else here, too. The room is arranged quite neatly, but it is also evident that someone had been staying here prior to the violent act they were here to investigate. He sees Morgan and Rossi analysing the blood spatter pattern on the wall, next to the outline of where the body was found. There's something here, though, he can feel it quite strongly, a subtle hint directing towards the information still yet to be uncovered within these walls.

He moves from the main room into the even smaller, even more cramped bathroom. There's nothing remarkable about it, the countertop filled with the standard toiletries and personal care items that all hotels and motels seem to carry. He looks down to the floor next to the toilet on a whim, and notices the two towels thrown down on the floor. Bending down for a closer look, he reaches out one gloved hand and picks up the two linen items, studying them closely.

"Hey guys," he starts, moving back into the main room with his find, "I think our UnSub is a woman. I found two towels on the ground between the toilet and the shower, one with several hairs still stuck inside it. One towel for her hair, one towel for her body."

Morgan nods, clearly agreeing with the conclusion his younger counterpart has come to. "That would fit with the eyewitness reports of a pregnant woman hanging around the two scenes, not to mention the blood spatter pattern on this wall," he adds, gesturing the lines of red standing out against the pale blue of the wallpaper. "The angle of the spatter would indicate that the shooter was slightly shorter than the victim, causing the blood to spray upwards at this particular angle."

"A pregnant woman that can handle a gun and take down a larger male target? We may be dealing with a professional here," says Rossi.

"I'd have to agree," concurs Morgan, rubbing his face tiredly with one hand. "There's no overkill here, no sign of sexual release or fetish behaviour. This kill is clean and precise – orderly and controlled. We need to call Hotch and see if he and Seaver have come to the same conclusion," he says, pulling out his phone and dialling his supervisor's number.

Reid, however, finds himself distracted by something else, some thought nagging at him from the corner of his mind. Something about the name, the name that the room was registered to, gnawed at him.

"This room was rented to an Ada Dirk, who paid in cash and stayed only one night," mumbles Reid, almost to himself.

"What's that, Reid?" asks Rossi, noticing the young man caught in his train of thought.

"This room was rented to an Ada Dirk; the room in Greenhaven was rented to a Darla Adamson. A.D, D.A. It may be a code, a vestigial habit left over from some sort of training that the UnSub may have had, either police or military. I mean, we'll need more data to come to a conclusion on it, but I think that she is definitely a former law enforcement official.

Suddenly, a memory comes rushing through his head, of a time just over five months ago when he'd overheard a certain dark-haired SSA talking hurriedly on the phone with an unidentified friend. _"Lauren Reynolds is dead," _he'd heard her say, and he knows now that most intelligence operations utilized code name protocols in order to organize and identify their agents. What if this code was similar to that same protocol?

"I think we may be dealing with someone from the intelligence community," concludes Reid, turning back to Rossi once more. "And if that's the case, I think we've got a lot more bodies coming our way."


	7. Closer

**I just want to thank everyone for reading, and I hope you're enjoying it as much as I enjoy writing it! :)**

* * *

She knows they are close, too close for comfort.

When she wakes in the morning, curled up on her side with the pillows tucked between her legs and under her back for support, she spends several glorious moments in a sleep-induced bliss. For a moment, she remembers nothing of the situation she's in, nothing about the trouble she's caused or the pain (both physical and mental) that she feels. For that single moment, she is simply a woman, lying in her bed, the sun streaming down through the window onto her face, as the early morning breeze slips into the room through the crack in the window.

But then her hand connects with mind, and she registers the weight of the gun clutched in her grip, even in sleep, and she feels the movements of her child deep in her abdomen, and then everything comes rushing back to her once more. She sighs, instantly weary, and forces herself out of bed to take a shower and to face this newly arrived and inescapable day.

* * *

"Good morning," she says, nodding to the housekeeping attendant that passes her along the sidewalk connecting the rooms of the motel. She heads inside to the main office, approaching the desk where a young, dark-haired man is manning the station.

"Good morning, ma'm," he says in greeting, smiling up at her from his chair.

She tries to smile back at him, but it falls through, so she settles for the approximate facsimile of a (hopefully) sleepy half-smile. "I'm here to check out," she says, sliding her room key onto the countertop between them.

"No problem," he replies, taking the key from her. "Diane, right?" he says, having turned back to computer screen on his desk.

"Diane Aven," she confirms, leaning forward to support herself on the desk as a particularly strong assault begins on her pelvis.

The young attendant looks over at her, concerned. "You alright, ma'm?"

She smiles at him, the expression strained by the pain in her abdomen. "It's fine, it's just an early morning workout in there."

"Well, sit down while the little one works out, I'll have you checked out in no time," he says, just as the phone rings. He excuses himself with a wave of his hand towards the chairs opposite him, two recliners that formed a triangle with the television mounted onto the wall.

She sits down in one of them, relieved to be able to relax for just a minute. She knows that at only five months and change, she's still got a lot to go in her pregnancy, but she can't help feeling a bit overwhelmed in this moment. If she's already feeling sluggish and tired at this stage, is it really feasible for her to still be moving around and hiding her trail from her pursuers effectively at full-term?

She tries to distract herself by looking up at the television screen in front of her, advertising some new Magic Bullet contraption geared for infants and young children. A magic bullet food processor for kids? She hadn't even thought of that, hadn't even begun to consider what type of feeding technique or plan she had decided upon for her baby. She hadn't really thought about anything to do with the baby after it is out of her womb, exposed to the reality of the outside world. What then? What about when the baby is born? Can she really be drawing her weapon when faced with an opponent if she's got an infant in a Baby Bjorn strapped to her chest? But even more than that, more than the immediate fears of Doyle and his henchmen tracking her down, what about the more mundane things? What about a crib, and a diaper genie, and a changing table? What about the playroom, and the toys, and the clothes? What about all the baby paraphernalia that she has had no opportunity to collect, or even a home where she can place it all?

What about the fact that she will be totally alone?

She rubs her face anxiously, holding her chin in the palms of her hands. How is she going to do this alone? She knows she is strong, that she is more than capable of facing most of life's challenges on her own, but for some reason, taking this next step seems somehow wrong without a safety net in place. She doesn't have her parents for advice, she is lacking in friends to turn to for support, and, most of all, she is missing a partner to go through this all with her. A partner – which, she supposes, would mean Reid. And then she's come full-circle, back to the original grief that drives it all, forcing her back to the memories of that night and how she'd left him, alone. Maybe this is the universe's way of paying her back for her misdeed, a cosmic version of "what goes around comes around".

She shakes her head abruptly, trying to clear her intrusive thoughts away. Looking back at the screen, she notices that the local news has come on, and she makes a conscious effort to focus on that instead. The news opening credits roll, flashing the emblem of the local network affiliate, and the face of a young, generic blonde woman comes onto the screen.

"Good evening," she begins, "We have an update on the situation in Greenhaven and Westvale. For the past two nights, these two towns have been held tight in the grip of terror after the murders of two men."

She is overtaken by a strange and obscure feeling, one of guilt mixed with anger, at the images on the screen before her. Part of her is disgusted at the knowledge of her role in the incidents, while another is angry at the fact that she had to kill them at all. She shouldn't be out here, in the middle of nowhere; she should be safe in DC, back with her colleagues and her friends. She should be back with her family, where she belongs.

The blonde continues onwards, her monologue uninterrupted by Emily's inner dialogue. "Due to the unusual circumstances surrounding these deaths, KRFN Great Falls has confirmed that a special unit of the FBI has been called in to assist with the investigation. The Behavioural Analysis Unit, or the BAU, has been called in for their expertise in analysing, profiling, and finding unknown suspects in murder cases."

Emily can barely keep breathing as she stares at the screen. Though the blond continues to talk, the camera switches from a close-up of her face live in the studio to a pre-recorded shot of Rossi, Morgan, and Reid crossing the tarmac at the Great Falls Airport and stepping into a standard-issue black FBI SUV. Her heart skips several beats as she watches Reid open the door the backseat, sliding into his customary spot in the back of the vehicle. The earlier feeling of guilt and of anger is replaced with the paralyzing feeling of fear, her fight or flight instinct kicking in involuntarily. She stays, unmoving, in her seat for several moments, until she finally registers the voice of the hotel reception clerk calling her (almost) name.

"Ms. Aven? Ms. Aven? You're good to go!' he calls out, as she finally turns to face him.

"Thank you," she whispers, and she knows her face must be white as a sheet, so she quickly gathers her things together and escapes out the door, trying to avoid any further human contact. It takes all she has not to run to her vehicle, as she calmly and carefully places her bags in the backseat and steps into the driver's side. She guns it out of the parking lot, escaping into the greater streets beyond, but even as she attempts to concentrate on the road, there's really only one thought in her mind.

_What do they know? And what will I do if they find me?_


	8. Insomnia

**Author's Note: I was sorely tempted (in a really immature way) to name this chapter "Shit Hits the Fan". With that in mind, here's chapter 8! Thanks again for reading and all the great reviews!**

* * *

He's been having trouble sleeping.

Usually, he can't wait to get into bed, to turn off the lights, to close his eyes, and to escape. In sleep, he doesn't have to think about the headaches and what they might mean, he doesn't have to think about the bodies and the blood and the horror, and he certainly doesn't have to think about a particular brown-haired co-worker. It doesn't mean that he doesn't dream, though; he dreams most nights, the same scene over and over again, one where he makes the same mistake every time. At least it's better than the world beyond his sub-conscious; at least in his dreams she never leaves.

Lately though, within the past week to be precise, he's found himself lying wide awake at ungodly hours of the night, unable to descend into the unregimented world of REM. Instead, he spends the long hours between dusk and dawn staring up at the ceiling of his bedroom, trying very hard not to think at all.

This night is no different. He is lying in his bed in a motel room, one of the roadside kinds: cheap, rundown, and generically plain. From this vantage point, he could be in Ohio or Florida or Alaska for all he can tell. There is absolutely nothing in this room that would indicate that he is, in fact, currently in the middle-of-nowhere Montana, searching for a pregnant female UnSub with professional and/or assassination ties. For all intents and purposes, that description should easily narrow the pool of suspects. But with the hair sample from the towel still in DNA processing, and without any viable leads aside from a pattern in the pseudonyms used, they are simply out of luck for the time being.

He rouses himself out of bed, grabbing the t-shirt on the chair next to the lone table in the room, and he makes his way over to the window. He knows it must be late, judging by the level of darkness outside – they have stopped for the evening in the town of Evensly, a small arrangement of homes set along the highway about halfway between Westvale and Greenhaven. The rest of the team has long gone to bed – after a quiet dinner at the adjacent Roadside Eatery, they had all wandered back to their own rooms. It's been like that since Emily's been gone, since her departure drove a wedge of grief in between them all. It wasn't like when they "lost" JJ – after all, she'd simply transferred to a new job, to a new position. Granted, it was hard moving on without her, but at the end of the day, they could still all meet up for drinks or a meal or anything at all.

But that's not the case with Emily.

She's gone. She's not coming back.

He sighs, rubbing his face with his hands, kneading the sides of his cheeks with his palms. He wishes he could go back in time, back to when the team was complete, back when they were all together. He wishes his headaches didn't worsen with every passing day, and that he could go back to a time where thoughts and fears of schizophrenia didn't plague his every waking minute. But, unlike what Doc Brown and Marty had done, he can't go back in time, and he feels so god damned lost because of it.

Movement outside triggers a response in his peripherals, and he is jerked away from his self-indulgent reverie. There is a woman outside, moving quietly and stealthily, but now that he's seen her he can't look away. His first instinct (sadly) is that it must be a woman of the night, a hooker, leaving in the dark after her latest business transaction. However, he changes his mind when he spots the bag at her feet, a duffel bag large enough that she wouldn't have brought it with her on a call. That means she must be a guest, someone registered and staying at the hotel.

Then where is she going in the middle of the night?

Intrigued now, he leans in closer, trying to improve his vantage point. Her back is still to him, and it is dark by her door, but he can make out certain details well enough, like the shortly cropped hair and the athletic curve of her body. She finishes fiddling with the door and leans down to pick up the bag, her face still masked by the shadows by the door. Carrying the duffel parallel to her body, she quickly makes her way over to her vehicle, a non-descript black sedan parked immediately next to her room. She unlocks the door and opens it in one swift movement, throwing her bag inside and moving to get inside the vehicle.

And that's when his heart stops.

Without the bag to shield her midsection, he can see the swell of her stomach beneath her sweater, the easily discernable bump protruding outwards from her otherwise slim frame. He is frozen by shock as he processes this fact, while she steps into her vehicle, and closes the door behind her.

She's already turned the key in the ignition and started to back up her vehicle when he swings open the door of his room, emerging into the night clad only in a t-shirt and sweatpants. He is regrettably barefoot in the cool moonlight, but his adrenaline is running so high that he doesn't even notice.

"FBI!" he calls out, gun drawn and level with the vehicle. "Put the vehicle into park and place your hands palm-up out of the window." The car has backed up towards him, and he approaches the rear of the vehicle with caution, still unable to see the woman's face.

Usually when confronted by police, there's a moment of panic, he's noticed, a moment of pure fight-or-flight instinct that takes over. The UnSub usually freezes, unsure for a fleeting moment of what to do.

This woman, however, does not hesitate.

She shifts the vehicle into first and then immediately into second, and the vehicle rockets out of the parking lot and into the night. He doesn't even get a shot off: the surrounding area is too dark for him to get a clear shot, but he knows it really wouldn't have a made a difference anyways. At the most he would have punctured a tire, but she still would have had enough momentum to get a significant head start.

He can hear the doors open behind him, his teammates presumably emerging into the night behind his line of sight. "Reid?" calls out Morgan, who immediately draws his weapon when he spots the gun drawn in Spencer's hands.

"She was here,' he breathes, before he checks the safety on his weapon and re-holsters it. He turns around to face his colleague, and he can see Rossi, Hotch and Seaver emerge from their own respective rooms into in the motel parking lot.

"What happened?" asks Rossi, who is oddly still dressed in slacks and a dress shirt, and Reid briefly wonders if the man ever sleeps.

"The UnSub," he starts to explain, collecting his thoughts and rewinding his memory, "she was here. I saw her from my window. She came out of room 116, put her bag in her car, and that's when I saw that she was pregnant. So I came outside and asked her to stop the car, but she sped out of here the second I walked out."

They are all congregated now, in the center of the parking lot, and only now does he realize that he is barefoot and barely clothed in the cool Montana night. Hotch is already delegating, telling Seaver and Rossi to check out room 116 and the parking stall and Morgan to call Garcia to tell her about the details of the woman and the car.

Spencer is already walking to the motel office, where the lights are still on. The night manager is sitting at the desk with his legs up on the counter, sipping coffee and watching late night programs on the small television next to his feet.

"Can I help you, sir?" he asks, slipping his feet from the counter and hastily placing the coffee down, spilling some of the dark brown liquid down the side of the mug.

"I need everything you've got on the woman in room 116," Spencer says, placing his badge and credentials down on the desk. "And I need it now."


	9. Help

**This is just a short, separate POV to the last chapter (because you guys were just so great with your reviews!) :)**

**EDIT: I thought I'd be able to get another chapter in before I leave the country for three weeks, but alas, it did not happen. So please don't fear, this story is NOT abandoned - it will be updated again in a little while... :)**

* * *

She really didn't mean to sleep for this long.

She had arrived in town just after lunch, pulling into the nearly abandoned parking lot. She had made sure to avoid both Greenhaven and Westvale, since the two different mini-teams of FBI agents were working in those two towns. However, she knew she didn't want to go far – she tried to convince herself that it was all in order to confuse those tracking her, but she couldn't deny her selfish need to feel somewhat close to her family again.

So she drove to Evensly and selected the only motel (and, fittingly, restaurant) in town. She'd intended to check in, inspect her room and set up her defences before planning her next move, but the minute she entered her standard issue motel room she'd been overtaken by a more primal instinct – that of a tired mother-to-be requiring more sleep. She'd barely kept her eyes open long enough to do a perimeter check and to set up her hidden weapons (three in total) before collapsing onto the bed and falling into a deep slumber.

She'd awoken six hours later, startled out of her restful state by the sound of voices at her window.

Groggily, she rouses herself out of her bed, lamenting the loss of her ability to instantly spring from sleep to action, a skill lost around the time her body's demand for sleep had increased. She moves silently to the edge of the window, hidden from view by the mauve curtain lining the interior of the window. Her gun is ready at her side, prepared for anything.

Well almost anything, as it turns out.

She nearly drops the gun in shock as she watches Ashley Seaver and David Rossi cross the parking lot, followed immediately by Derek Morgan and Aaron Hotchner. The four of them are all caught in conversation, heading towards the rooms on the opposite side of the parking lot, where two black Suburbans are now parked. A fifth person runs up behind them, aiming to catch up to the rest of his group, and her heart involuntarily skips a beat as she realizes who it is. Spencer Reid makes it back to his teammates in time to bid them all goodnight, as they all wave goodbye to each other for the evening, making their ways into their respective rooms.

All she can think in that moment is: _Shit_.

How could she have been so stupid? She should have been more careful, should have been more prudent in her choice of town and motel. Well, not like Evensly had any other lodgement choices, but still, she was much too close to the team and the investigation to begin with, and now here she was checked into the same motel.

Her first instinct is to get her things together, throw them into the vehicle, and to get the hell out of Dodge. However, there's still way too much daylight, even in this late in the evening, and the parking lot is much too small to risk moving to her vehicle without drawing the attention of one of her five former team members. Though a few more vehicles have pulled in for the night after her, it's still nowhere busy enough for her to slip out unnoticed.

So she'll have to wait. She can't leave in the morning, after them, because if they've already questioned the night manager upon their arrival (who hadn't checked "Sarah Ryan" in), they'll question the day manager first thing, and it's pretty damn certain that he'll remember the lone pregnant woman checked into room 116. She is, at the very least, moderately pleased that she'd realized one of her mistakes, that of alternating first letters with her chosen pseudonyms. She'd recalled it last night, after seeing Reid's face on the television screen, about how he'd overheard her talking to Tsia about "Lauren Reynolds" and how Interpol had arranged the whole L.R thing for its agents.

She decides to make her move in the middle of the night, to have everything ready to go and waiting, so that she can just slip away into her vehicle and out back onto the safety and obscurity of the open road. She turns on the television and prepares to wait out the remaining six hours or so, fighting hard against the temptation to open her curtains and casually watch the respective windows of her former teammates. Propped up against the bed, her hand rubs over her stomach nervously, as if she is afraid that somehow her unborn child will sense the proximity of its other genetic donor (somehow "father" doesn't quite seem appropriate), so close and so nearby.

Finally, three am rolls around, and she quickly turns off the lights and the television, grabbing her bag on the bed as she makes her way to the door. She hopes that if, by chance, someone does see her, one might assume she was a prostitute or some other unsavoury character prone to wandering the night, leaving her to her own affairs. She closes the door, placing the bag done once more as she fiddles with the lock. She starts to make her way to her vehicle when a feeling a panic overcomes her, and she recognizes it as the sensation of being watched.

Hurrying to the vehicle, she places the bag on the passenger seat and moves to get in. That's when she hears the door open behind her, somewhere on the other side of the parking lot, and she's already decided that it's time to bolt.

"FBI!" she hears called out from behind her vehicle, and her heart almost shudders to a stop from the shock of hearing his voice again. He yells out again, instructions to stop the vehicle and to get out, but with the blood pounding in her ears she can't quite make it out. She shifts the vehicle swiftly from reverse to first gear, and then on to second, looking back in the mirror once before she rockets out of the motel parking lot and out onto the adjacent stretch of dark, open road.

The moment where she looks back is ingrained in her head: she can see him standing behind her vehicle, gun drawn parallel to the car, his hair all askew in the night air. He is clad in only a t-shirt and sweatpants, and it reassures her, somehow, that nothing about him (physically, at least) has changed.

"Stop it, Emily," she whispers out loud to herself, because she knows what she is doing. She's romanticizing everything, now; ever since she's been pregnant, she's found herself putting a romantic spin on her one night stand with Spencer Reid, altering her memories to make it feel much more sensitive and emotional than it really was.

She shakes her head to clear her thoughts, and focuses on the problem at hand. She's on the run again. She can't go back the way she came. And they are getting closer – both Doyle's henchmen _and _her former team. They are moving in from all angles, and she really and honestly does not know what to do.

So she decides to do the one thing she always does when she is left without answers. Taking a deep, calming breath, she grabs her cellphone and dials a number she committed to memory long ago.

"Penelope. It's me. I know it's late, but I need your help."


	10. Revelation

**Sorry for the long, long wait! I appreciate the patience, and I hope this will tide you over until the next (longer) chapter! :)**

* * *

He is tense with adrenaline, his heart still pounding loudly in his ears.

Even though its been nearly an hour now since his encounter with the UnSub, he can't seem to rid himself of the excess energy unleashed by his body's endocrine system. It is strange, however, that he finds himself so affected by this one incident; he deals with UnSubs in confrontational situations all the time, so why does this one encounter resonate so deeply with him?

His thoughts are interrupted by the entrance of the night manager back into the main lobby of the hotel. "Sorry it took me so long, the damn video system's been on and off for months now. Should be ready to go now, though," he states, gesturing for Reid and his teammates to follow him into the back section of the office.

They all move into the small, cramped back room of the hotel office; the two desks placed side by side are a veritable mess, covered in old receipts, newspapers, and even a couple old pizza boxes. The night manager notices their eyes lingering on the clutter, and instantly he blushes, embarrassed to show the FBI the state of the hotel's back room. "Sorry about the mess," he mutters quickly, before turning to the small television stand in the far corner of the room. Underneath the TV there is an old VCR, hooked up to the television by three cables leading from the front of the machine. Reid can't help but smile at the "old school" set-up, at the simplicity of everything.

The manager pops the tape into the player, and then sits back in the lone office chair. "Just give me a second here, I gotta rewind back to yesterday... afternoon, right?"

"Right," answers Morgan.

They all wait in silence as the tape flashes images at them in reverse order. They watch the night manager lounge at the front desk, watching various late night films and early evening talk shows; they see guests check in intermittingly, and then finally they watch themselves on the screen as they request rooms for the night. For some reason, Reid can still feel his heartbeat pound in his chest, nervous energy thrumming in his fingertips and his spine. The moment is coming closer now, and he is almost worried about how nervous her feels, about how involved with this case he has become.

"Here we go," says the manger, as he flicks the remote from "rewind" to "play". Suddenly everything is in real time, everything is moving at the right speed. There is a woman at the desk, looking down at the papers in front of her, her face obscured by shadow. The sound on the monitor doesn't work, so there is no way to tell what she and the day manager are discussing, but she quickly finishes signing her papers, puts the pen down and looks up to the day manager to take her key and head over to her room.

The next thing Reid remembers is the sudden horizontal position of his body.

He is lying – no, crumpled would be a better description – on the ground, woozy and disorientated. Morgan and Seaver are at his sides, their worried faces occupying most of his field of vision.

"Reid!" exclaims Morgan, kneeling beside his colleague. "Are you okay?"

"I'm – I'm fine," he mumbles, embarrassed by the fact that he had somehow fainted and ended up flat on his back on the ground. And then he remembers why he had fainted, why he is currently sprawled out on the floor of a cheap roadside motor inn's back office.

The woman on the tape was Emily.

There was no question about it, no confusion, and no ambiguity about her identity. The hair might have been different, the clothes a different style, but it was unmistakably Emily Prentiss. Suddenly he can feel his heart rate pick up, faster even than before, and the butterflies in his stomach announce their presence with the overwhelming feeling of paralysing anxiety.

"You okay, buddy?" asks the night manager, half risen from his chair, his face contorted in an expression of utter confusion.

"Yeah, yeah I'm fine," Reid murmurs, pushing himself up off of the floor and grabbing Morgan's outstretched hand.

Hotch is already facing the manager, hand outstretched. "We need that tape."

* * *

They have moved back to Rossi's room to regroup and, in Reid's case, to regain some element of composure. They all remain stunned into silence, too shocked to even move. It is Rossi who first speaks, seated upon the desk, mindlessly spinning a pen between his fingers.

"How can it be her?" he asks, addressing none of them in particular.

Hotch is standing next to the door, arms crossed over his chest, his forehead knotted in deep concentration. "I don't know what circumstances brought her into this, but there's no question that the woman on that tape was Emily Prentiss."

"But she's pregnant. Isn't anyone as confused by this as I am?" asks Seaver, looking around at all of them for confirmation.

Reid, for his part, hasn't said a word since leaving the hotel manager's office. He's sitting on the edge of the farthest bed, staring out in the oblivion of the off-white wallpaper. He can't stop reliving the moments in the office, the point in the tape where she turns to look up at the camera, and he can finally see her eyes, her face, and he knows in that moment that it is, without a doubt, her.

He can't, however, accept the fact that she is pregnant.

He can still feel her skin against his, soft and smooth; he can still smell the perfume on her neck, the faint aroma of flowers in her hair. He can still taste her lips upon his, pressed up against him, alone together in the dark of his home. And he knows, somehow, that the baby she is carrying is his, and that realization alone robs him of his voice and takes his breath away.

"It doesn't matter what the circumstances are now, she's our colleague and our friend, and we've got to help her now more than ever. It's starting to feel like there's something else at work here, someone else's hand guiding this along. We have to find her," states Morgan, oblivious to Reid's inner turmoil.

Hotch nods his assent, straightening up and moving towards the makeshift evidence board they'd assembled in the room. "Then we start now. No assumptions, no conjectures, let's just get down to the facts as best we can. In order to help Emily now, we have to remain as objective as possible."

As he, Rossi and Seaver turn to the board to review the evidence in light of their newest discovery, Morgan turns to the other agent still seated in the corner of the room. "Are you sure you're okay, kid?" he asks, concerned about the lack of input (or words at all, for that matter) from the most talkative member of their team.

Reid doesn't even look up. "I'm fine," he whispers, hands squeezing each other together in the center of his lap.

"You don't look so fine..."

Reid turns to his co-worker, and Morgan is surprised to see panic in the young man's eyes, as well as something else, something even more primitive than that. "I said I'm fine."

Morgan opens his mouth to reply his disbelief at that statement, but is interrupted by the message bell on his phone. He flips it open, reads the message, and quickly slips the phone back into his pocket.

"That was Penelope. Emily's called her for help. She wants to know what she should do."


	11. Dreams

**Author's Note: Thank you every for the kind reviews; I really do enjoy writing this story. My updates will most likely be weekly now; I work in a National Park and am frequently away from the Internet. Hope you enjoy it!**

* * *

_She doesn't quite know how she's ended up here._

_She's sitting at the kitchen table, in a house that is not quite familiar. There's a distinct lived-in quality to the rooms around her, the sense of a well-cared for residence. A cup of tea, still warm, sits in front of her, two of her fingers laced around the handle. _

_She can hear the sound of soft voices, then louder laughter. Her ears try to pinpoint the source of the sound, and she turns in her chair to see an open screen door leading outside. Leaving her mug behind, she stands and strides over to the open doorway, enjoying the feel of the light breeze wafting in and the cool sensation of the morning air on her cheeks. She passes thru the door and out onto a small pavilion set in the middle of a large, well shaded back yard. There are toys littered all around: small red and blue blocks, a pink tricycle, a large yellow beach ball. Near the back fence line, there is a man lying on the ground, holding a squirming toddler above him._

_She can't help but smile at the scene, looking out at the little girl held up in the air. The girl's face is lit up with a blinding smile, her eyes wide with the thrill of being airborne. Emily's eyes meet hers, and the girl suddenly begins to squirm even more, her small hands pushing down at the hands supporting her so high up off the ground. _

"_Down!" she demands, and the hands comply, bringing her down to the ground slowly and safely. Suddenly she is a blur of pink and white, as she runs forwards as fast as her legs will take her across the yard and over to Emily's waiting arms._

"_Mama!" she exclaims, held tight against Emily chest._

"_Good morning, my love," Emily says in reply, though there is a nagging feeling that remains in her heart, a persistent sensation that something is not quite right here._

"_Went flying!" her daughter exclaims, pulling her head away from the crook between Emily's shoulder and neck and pointing out to the man who was now walking over to them, his hands tucked casually into his pockets, a smile already spread across his face. _

"_Well, more like suspending, but the basic principle of escaping gravity's clutches is the same," says Reid, grinning openly now. "Good morning," he says, leaning forward to both ruffle their daughter's unruly brown curls and to place a kiss on Emily's cheek._

_As his lips brush her skin, she tenses, suddenly aware of the perversion of reality, the improbability – impossibility? – of the moment acutely evident now. As Reid gently takes the little girl from her now frozen grasp and the two return to their playful adventures in the yard, Emily is left breathless by the realization that this cannot be real, this is too perfect, too idyllic, too – _

And then she wakes up, legs tangled together with the jacket she'd thrown over herself as a blanket, on her makeshift bed in the back of her vehicle. Her heart is beating furiously in her chest, as the veil of confusion left from her dream pulls away from her, slowly but firmly placing her back in the land of the conscious.

There is light streaming in through the windows; a pale and earthy light consistent with the early morning hours. Her back is cramped from the last few hours crumpled up in the confining backseat, and she winces as she straightens up into a sitting position, rubbing at the layers of skin and tissue in the vain hope of soothing her aching sacrum. Her stomach rumbles hungrily, demanding attention, and she decides to remain motionless for a moment, just taking a moment to process everything before her "day" actually began.

She'd called Garcia last night after her mad dash away from the parking lot and away from a certain FBI agent. She knows how close things are to coming to a head, and she can't keep running like this, not with her old team behind her, at least. She left in order to protect them, to keep them safe from the consequences of mistakes she'd made long ago, but now it's all been in vain; they are all in just as much danger as her.

So she told Garcia to relay a message to the team, to tell them to just hold off on their pursuit for a moment, to just wait for her to relay more information. To be quite honest, she'd only really said that to buy some time, to give herself some time to just rest, albeit briefly, while she attempts to figure out what to do in order to keep everyone safe.

And now, to top everything off, her emotions and her thoughts are further muddled by this dream she's just awoken from, a dream where the future was perfect and inviting and warm and loving. A future where she has a home, and a daughter, and a man that loves her. A future she desperately wants, but is finding it harder and harder to believe will ever be a reality. She can barely see herself living out the rest of the month, let alone long enough to deliver her baby into the world safely.

Emily places her head into her hands, leaning forward into the back of the front seat's head rest. She's just so tired now, so tired of this running and fighting and killing and lying. Most of all, she hates the lying, she despises having to conceal the truth and having to make up new histories and alibis all in order to simply stay alive.

The phone rings in the front seat of her car, and she grudgingly opens the side door of the vehicle, stretching out into the surprisingly warm morning air. She opens the front door and reaches in to grab her phone off of the seat, remarking with latent surprise the flash of the time (5:23am) as she flips the phone open, knowing it could only be Garcia.

"Hi, Penelope," she says, leaning back against the hood of the vehicle, attempting to straighten out the knots caught all along the base of her spine.

There's a brief pause, and then an all-too familiar voice rings in her ears. "Uh – hi, Emily."

She braces herself against the frame of the vehicle, her legs buckling in an instant. She takes a moment to regain her composure before answering, "Sp-Spencer?"

The voice sounds so far away, though she knows that less than two hundred geographical miles separate them. "Garcia put me through to you; she said you told her no one was to have your number."

"Mmm," she replies vaguely, still too shocked to form coherent sentences.

"I know it was you, in the parking lot, last night. We checked the security cameras. I – I thought you were long gone, Emily, I thought – I even thought you might be dead. I even fainted when I saw you on the screen, fainted right away, like Morgan's ever going to let me live that one down, he still hasn't let me live down the time at the diner, you remember the one, where I mistook the bottle of-"

"Spencer –" she interrupts, recognizing his habit of nervous rambling.

He stops abruptly, and a silence hangs between them, palpable even across the telephone line and the distance between them. "You're pregnant," he says simply, whispering it across the line like a sinner might in confession, murmuring to a priest.

"Yes," she breathes, her voice barely audible, even in the empty silence of the early morning.

"I – I don't what to say."

She can feel the mounting pressure behind her eyes, and she mentally curses herself, knowing that the combination of her shifting hormones and the residual emotional baggage from her dream is making her feel so much more emotionally compromised than usual. "I had to leave," she says simply.

"Without saying goodbye," he says, and she can hear the pain in his voice.

"Yes," she breathes, blinking hard to keep the tears at bay.

"You- you used me," he murmurs, and now the hurt is tangible, she can practically feel his pain, and the waves of guilt she'd pushed down and hidden way rise up again, overwhelming her. She knows he's right – she did use him, knowing him like she does (or did). She knows about the greatest fear he holds in his heart, the fear born of and nurtured by the abandonment of his father, of Gideon, and now her.

"I'm – I'm sorry, Spencer, I'm so sorry."

There's a moment of silence, and then his voice comes back again. "Come home," he says simply, and her heart skips a beat at the request, at the possibility of making her disappearing dream come true.

"I can't. I'm sorry."

"Let us help, then, Emily, please. I don't-" he starts, then pausing, as if weighing his next statement carefully. "I don't want to lose the chance to meet my own child."

Emily chokes back an involuntary sob, catching it in her throat before it has the chance to escape into the world. "I'll be in contact," she whispers, before sliding her finger across the screen and ending the call.

In the pale morning air of Montana, Emily Prentiss leans back against her vehicle, and wills herself with all her might not to cry.


	12. Coming to Terms

**It's back! Infinitely sorry for the endless delays. Special shout out to lolyncut whose message kicked me back into gear. Thanks for all the reviews everyone, it's what in the end made me decide to keep going with this. Happy Monday! :) **

* * *

He can't stop shaking.

As he hangs up the phone, he can feel the tremors coursing through him, the shivers running continually down his spine. He'd just spoken to a ghost. The ghost of Emily Prentiss.

He sighs and gets up from the bed, the perfectly made sheets a silent testament to the fact that he hasn't gotten any sleep in a while. It took him thirty minutes of cajoling and begging for Penelope to finally patch his call through to her. And once she had, he'd started to shake, all the tension and raw emotion suddenly freed to run amok throughout his body.

He's never thought about being a father. Ever. Kind uncle, doting godparent, for sure – but he, a dad – no way. He'd been a parent, in many ways, since his father had walked out the door and left him alone with a loving but schizophrenic mother. He isn't prepared for this, how could he be? Who was he to learn from, to find guidance in?

And yet...

_Unbidden, the images arrive in his mind. He is in the hospital again, and it looks exactly like the room in which Henry was born, down to the last bouquet of flowers and bunch of balloons. He is standing next to the bed, a smile spreading across his face in delighted shock as he gazes down at the bundle in his arms._

_She smiles at him from the bed, and he realizes it wasn't Emily in real life, it was JJ, but he ignores the impossibility and gazes down at the infant in his arms, a warm body pressed tightly against his own. Rosy pink cheeks, soft downy hair, the baby looks nothing like him and everything like her..._

He shakes his head in annoyance and irritation, and moves back to the bed. Seating himself, he buries his head in his hands, still as confused and as bewildered as he'd ever been. What were the odds for a situation like this? Given Emily's age, their single "encounter", the stress placed on her body – the whole situation was a statistical fluke. Not to mention the fact that she'd clearly decided to keep the baby, in the middle of a desperate battle for her life. What could have made her choose that was beyond him entirely...

Well, not entirely. He more than most knows what it was and is like to feel alone, to crave physical and emotional interaction yet always reject it. He knows what it is like to feel like the only person in the world.

A knock at the door interrupts his thoughts, and he reluctantly rises to his feet once more to answer it. He'd left rather abruptly after their meeting the night before, once they'd established a working game plan and had decided to wait for further updates from Penelope before proceeding further. The analyst had convinced them to wait until the morning so that she could try and convince Emily to come to them. Hotch had agreed to give her eight hours, and then after that they'd have to resume operations with or without Emily's help.

Everyone had been fairly shocked when the pieces had come together: that the pregnant woman accused of murder in northern Montana was none other than their former teammate. He'd heard Rossi whisper under his breath to Morgan about Emily's obvious condition, and Reid knew for a fact that Garcia was equally – if not more – curious about the whole situation. He'd only sat there, nodding his head occasionally when asking for his opinion, and elaborating further only when prompted by Hotch or Morgan. He'd left just past midnight, feigning fatigue and telling them he'd see them in the morning. As he'd left, he saw the doubt in their eyes, the confusion at his current state, but they hadn't pressed the matter.

Until now.

Sliding the lock on the door out of the way, he opens it up and blinks against the already bright light of a beautiful Montana morning. He refocuses his vision and finds that the figure before him is Morgan.

"I'm awake," Reid mutters, before turning and heading back into his hotel room.

Morgan follows, not waiting for a formal invitation. "You seemed... off last night, Reid. Want to explain what's going on?"

Reid shrugs, and sits back down in the same spot he's occupied off and on for the past few hours. "I'm fine," he says, though even he can recognize the insincerity in his voice.

Morgan crosses the length of the room and grabs the one freestanding chair in the corner. He turns it to face Reid, and sits down, a look of concern spreading across his features. "Is it about Emily?"

The young doctor almost flinches at the mention of her name. He doesn't answer, afraid of what his voice might unintentionally betray.

Morgan sighs and tries to meet the eyes of his friend. "Look, we are just as worried and concerned for her as you are, believe me. I was before any of this happened, and now it's just amplified. "He rubs a hand over his head and sighs. "Look, I was floored by this whole pregnancy thing too. First Doyle, and now what, a baby? This doesn't make any sense, man, I'm just as lost as you, but we've got to pull it together and work as a team to get our girl back."

Reid can't – won't – meet his friend's eyes, still staring down at the ground. A long moment passes before he answers, and even then, he doesn't turn to face the other agent.

"Maybe she doesn't want us here." _Maybe she doesn't want me here..._

Morgan gets up from the chair and sits down next to the younger agent. "Look, Reid, she called Penelope. She wants us here. She wants our help. I'm sure she tried everything she thought she could do to protect us, but we are here now and I'm glad for that. I'm still not sure what this whole new stuff is all about, but we've found our way through way more complicated problems than this. Trust me, kid."

Reid knows that his friend is only trying to cheer him up, to motivate him to get back into the game and to restore his confidence once more. But all Reid can think about is the grainy VHS image, the face that was so familiar, the unfamiliar shape of her body as she moved across the screen. That was her baby in there. His baby.

And he was just going to have to come to terms with that.

Abruptly, he stands, throwing Morgan off balance and forcing the other man to throw out a hand to steady himself on the mattress. The younger agent looks down at his teammate. "Coffee?" he says, before striding towards the door.

"Uh, sure," Morgan answers, not entirely sure what just happened. But he follows the younger agent anyways, hoping against hope that for the first time in the last twelve hours the doctor's mind was finally in the right place.


End file.
